Jamaican postcolonial writing practices and metalinguistic discourses as a challenge to established norms and standards

2020 ◽  
pp. 225-243
Author(s):  
Andrea Hollington
Keyword(s):  
Sense Of Self ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Writing Practices ◽  
Conventional Idea

There are moments when people imagine languages differently, sometimes even radically rethinking “language” beyond the conventional idea of “language” itself as a coherent entity. Such moments tend to coincide with, or be triggered by, other historically significant occasions such as the casting off of the yoke of cruel colonial ministries, or the search for a new collective sense of self, previously stigmatized. Often accompanying such reimaginings is a new embodied and euphoric sense of self, suddenly made possible through language, together with the realization that language has the power to form other subjectivities. This chapter considers a singular and brief moment of such reimagining. It is the reimagining of Portuguese in the dawning of a post-colonial, independent Mozambique.

From the Demotic to the Literary

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 213-254
Author(s):  
Paolo Sartori
Keyword(s):  
Central Asia ◽  
18Th Century ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
The Balkans ◽  
Writing Practices ◽  
Central Eurasia ◽  
Middle Volga ◽  
The Russian Empire ◽  
Point Of Departure

Abstract Understanding why Persian ceded ground to the vernacular Turkic in Central Asia in the 18th century is key to detecting major cultural realignments in the Balkans-to-Bengal complex. To date, however, focus has been predominantly on the constraining of Persian’s hegemonic status in Asia, its shaping colonial knowledge, and its stamping an imprint on other literary languages in post-colonial situations. Taking this literature as a point of departure, I change perspective and examine the process whereby a vernacular idiom acquired prominence prior to the onset of Russian colonization. By setting aside the issue of scope of Persian, I turn to an exploration of writing practices in Turkic in the early modern period in Khorezm, a major oasis in Central Asia within the territory of what is today Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan. Interpreted in the literature so far as an isolated phenomenon, the ascendance of Chaghatay Turkic in Khorezm has been in fact studied in isolation from similar processes of vernacularization. By reconnecting writing practices in this oasis to patterns of literary consumption in Central Eurasia more generally, I point to an area of shared vernacular sensibilities across Khorezm, the Middle Volga, the Kazakh Steppe and the Tarim Basin. Furthermore, I argue that the promotion of the vernacular among Turkic-speaking Muslims in the Russian empire in the early 20th century was built on earlier processes of elevation of a written culture from the demotic to the literary.

scholarly journals ‘A Tourist In The Country Of Men’: Sexuality, Self, And Multiple Modernities In Anya Ulinich’s Graphic Novel Lena Finkle’s Magic Barrel

Images ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-64
Author(s):  
Jessica Carr
Keyword(s):  
Life Experience ◽  
Sense Of Self ◽  
Gender Norms ◽  
Graphic Novel ◽  
Jewish Literature ◽  
Jewish American ◽  
American Life ◽  
Multiple Modernities ◽  
Writing Practices ◽  
And Gender

Abstract This article analyzes how Anya Ulinich’s graphic novel Lena Finkle’s Magic Barrel (2014) engages in and expands upon Jewish writing practices. I argue that through her use of the graphic novel as a medium, Ulinich both draws on and subverts masculine writing practices and images of women that have dominated Jewish literature and culture. Through her cross-discursive, intertextual, multi-directional writing, Ulinich depicts her protagonist Lena as gaining a sense of self, but one that is fragmentary and constantly experienced and re-pictured through memory and in relationship to others. Ulinich also raises the question, without providing a stable answer, as to the place of Soviet Jewish memory in Jewish-American life, experience, and literature. She places Russian, Jewish, and American writing and gender norms in conversation with each other, suggesting the difficulty of reconciling these different visions for women and modernity.

In search of a home: identities in transition in post-colonial Hong Kong

English Today ◽  
2002 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 39-45
Author(s):  
Jane Jackson
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Cultural Identity ◽  
Sense Of Self ◽  
Cultural Groups ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
Ethnic Chinese ◽  
Chinese University ◽  
Political Events ◽  
Identity Narratives

Excerpts from the cultural identity narratives and follow-up interviews of a group of ethnic Chinese majors in English at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, identifying recurrent issues and metaphors.IN HONG KONG, how have recent political events such as the Handover (change of sovereignty from Britain to China) in 1997 impacted on young people's sense of self? What cultural groups do they now identify with and why? What self-labels do they prefer? This article reports on a qualitative, sociocultural investigation that took place at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, a bilingual English/Chinese institution. Hong Kong have had a significant impact on shaping and sometimes changing students' cultural identities. The Handover, in particular, caused them to reflect on and even question their place in the world. Just before the change of sovereignty, many applied for passports whose nature sometimes brought them into conflict with their parents and grandparents.

Imagining Selves and Inventing Festival Sriwijaya

1999 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
pp. 38-53 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timothy P. Daniels
Keyword(s):  
Social History ◽  
Social Relations ◽  
Sense Of Self ◽  
Social Solidarity ◽  
New Order ◽  
Cultural Discontinuity ◽  
Post Colonial ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Factions ◽  
History Of

Clifford Geertz, in his discussion of the social history of an East Central Javanese town, described how rural migrants attempted to make sense of modern elections and political factions by applying old systems of meanings. As people adjusted to the evolving social conditions of new urban contexts, new knowledge supposedly emerged to order social relations. Yet he observed that in the 1950s this rarely was the case; usually a sense of vagueness and incoherence persisted. Similarly, Geertz's analysis of a Javanese funeral concluded that the ritual “failed” and consequently tensions persisted and intensified as a result of societal and cultural discontinuity; the social and the cultural were moving in opposite directions. Old cultural notions did not tend to give way to new notions more adept at effecting social solidarity. The contest over whose voice, whose sense of self and image of post-colonial Indonesia would prevail eventually culminated in the bloodbath of 1965–66, which marked the abrupt end of the Old Order and the birth of the Suhartoled New Order regime.

Lessons Learned From Coaching Postsecondary Students With Traumatic Brain Injury

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 88-96
Author(s):  
Mary R. T. Kennedy
Keyword(s):  
College Students ◽  
Traumatic Brain Injury ◽  
Brain Injury ◽  
Sense Of Self ◽  
Scientific Evidence ◽  
Sudden Onset ◽  
Lessons Learned ◽  
Speech Language Pathologists ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Exhaustive List

Purpose The purpose of this clinical focus article is to provide speech-language pathologists with a brief update of the evidence that provides possible explanations for our experiences while coaching college students with traumatic brain injury (TBI). Method The narrative text provides readers with lessons we learned as speech-language pathologists functioning as cognitive coaches to college students with TBI. This is not meant to be an exhaustive list, but rather to consider the recent scientific evidence that will help our understanding of how best to coach these college students. Conclusion Four lessons are described. Lesson 1 focuses on the value of self-reported responses to surveys, questionnaires, and interviews. Lesson 2 addresses the use of immediate/proximal goals as leverage for students to update their sense of self and how their abilities and disabilities may alter their more distal goals. Lesson 3 reminds us that teamwork is necessary to address the complex issues facing these students, which include their developmental stage, the sudden onset of trauma to the brain, and having to navigate going to college with a TBI. Lesson 4 focuses on the need for college students with TBI to learn how to self-advocate with instructors, family, and peers.

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